Drips and Drabs
by CrazySpark
Summary: Music is an inspiration, taking one through a myriad of emotions and situations. Eleven moment set to music for Alice and Tarrant.  shufflememe drabbles


Drips and Drabs

Shuffle Meme Alice/Tarrant

I do not own any recognizable trademarks displayed in this work of fiction. The ideas and writing are mine, however, so I would appreciate that my rights be observed in that respect.

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_Pretty Good Year – Tori Amos, 'Under The Pink'_

Alice blots the tears away, drawing in a stabilizing breath. She is being silly again, she is sure of it, but she isn't sure if she can hold on in this state of utter uncertainty. It hurts, and she hadn't been prepared for that sort of aching pain. Her mother is dead, and there is absolutely nothing she can do about it – occasionally it feels almost like she is melting, others she is word-lost in a blind rage at the cruelty of the entire world. She pushes herself up and grapples for a piece of parchment and a pen, writing her sister a hasty letter before diving with more surety then she had ever felt through the looking-glass and into the arms of the one she needs most.

_Calypso – Suzanne Vega, 'Solitude Standing'_

The garden was an utterly soothing place, and she could hear the strains of someone playing an odd stringed instrument somewhere in the palace behind her. Tarrant was gone – it was that time of year, when he went to pay his respects to his parents. She had pleaded to come, but he refused her gently, saying that she was ill enough with their first child, and he did not want her to come to any harm if he was taken away from reason. She sniffed gently, taking in the soft scent of the salt breeze. She wasn't at the palace at Marmoreal; instead she was at Mirana's little getaway by the sea, as the Queen termed it. She sighed, and let go of her worries. Tarrant was right, after all. Wasn't good for the baby. She basked languorously in the sunshine, and soon slipped off to slumber.

_Mairead Nan Cuiread/The Bob Parsons Strathspey – Tannas, 'Celtic Song'_

She laughed liltingly, leaping into a whirling dance, as the Outlandish group of musicians played as though they would drop dead without the skirling music. Tarrant laughed too, a genuine laugh, and he watched his love – _his_ mo chridh – leap and twirl, the plaid skirt of his clan colours swirling around her legs, pleats allowing for a wonderful array of movement. He noticed ruefully that her shawl was slipping from her shoulders, and the undyed muslin blouse really wasn't much protection from the cold night but really, he couldn't bring himself to stop her. She looked so much like either one of his clan members or a wild sídhe from the Outlandish moorlands, dancing a net of seduction.

_Promises In The Dark – Pat Benatar, 'Best Shots'_

She sobbed soundlessly. She hated this helpless feeling that burned and ached through her. She missed him so desperately sometimes, especially when Lord Ascot or her mother brought up the idea of marriage – she knew they were worried for her, but really, sometimes it was worse. She thought perhaps she could be friends with some of them, but it turned out to be horrid, because she wanted to have him by her side, murmuring suggestive things that would make her mother throw them out on their ears instead of these men, who looked at her like some sort of prize to be won, never appreciating herself for who she really was. And then she would loose herself to the darkness (madness) and scream at them, and then it would be whispered around again that the youngest Kingsleigh daughter was completely mad. So she sobbed in the corner of her room

"Why did I leave? Why won't you come for me?" She screamed into the darkness surrounding her.

There was no reply.

_Within You Without You – The Beatles, 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'_

This was surely a strange and exciting place, with strange new music and exotic spices and everything she could have ever dreamt up in her most strange and wonderful fantasies. India was everything she'd imagined and more. It was only made better by the fact that Tarrant was beside her, investigating a cup of Indian chai with vigorous interest. She sipped at hers; glad it was on ice, for it was also terribly hot in this country. She had been dressed in the native dress by the servants of the house Mirana had arranged for them and she quite liked it. So did her husband, if his roving eye was any indication. She rather liked the look of him herself in those light linen trousers.

"Do you like it?" she asked almost-innocently. Tarrant shot her a knowing grin and she hid her own broad smile in her cup of spicy cream tea.

"It's wonderful." He purred.

_Corporal Clegg – Pink Floyd, 'A Saucerful Of Secrets'_

She was sure this had to be a dream. Nothing quite made sense – a man with a wooden leg gallivanting around and having tea, and then there was the disconcerting possibility she was walking on the ceiling. She wasn't quite sure, but then a group of people marched by sideways playing kazoos, and her mind was finally made up as gravity reasserted itself and it started raining. Then she was in front of some sort of ceremony, where Mirana was rewarding the wooden-leg man with a medal of some kind. Next she was at an entirely bizarre tea party where she decided to just let things come as they would and settled back to enjoy herself, as the band of kazoo-players marched past on the ceiling, and an army of ducks marched past singing 'Corporal Clegg'.

_Why Worry? – Clannad, 'Anam'_

He settled back into his wingback chair and observed his wife on the settee. She was quite engrossed in playing with the baby, tiny Edine, who was entirely the apple of her eye, and wasn't that an odd phrase, really, she didn't wander around with apples on her eyes, and her eyes most certainly (probably) didn't taste like apples, not that he'd ever tried eyeballs, because that sounded utterly revolting. A bright gurgle and a chiming peal of laughter broke him out of his internal rant, and he was glad. He didn't want to hurry his life – or even, really, his thoughts – along. He was perfectly content to watch his wife and daughter play in tranquil peace. He loved them, simple as that.

_One By One – Enya, 'A Day Without Rain'_

She had said goodbye, and she'd never regretted a thing more, as sadness seemed to follow her everywhere nowadays. She had a reason to sigh, one to cry (was that a rhyme) and very few to laugh and smile. Stories about her were quite common, and most were quite scandalised by her behaviour, by the thought she had of being equal to men and she was, quite frankly, sick of it. She was her own woman, why did everyone want her to belong to a man when the only one she wanted was in another realm? But she swore to herself, her love for the man, tender and tiny as a newly budded flower, would never die. Not if she had her way.

_Astronomy Domine – Pink Floyd, 'The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn'_

There was noise everywhere, loud, terrifying noise. Alice covered her ears, almost afraid. Colours swirled past her eyes in a jumble and she swore she was never going to go where Bandy had smelled something far too interesting to pass up ever again. She'd ended up in a cell, after all, and the renegade Red Soldiers had drugged her, she was sure, making everything too loud, making everything so sensitive and the world dissolved into nonsense once more, utterly terrifying nonsense with noise and colours and she couldn't really breath, it was almost like she was underwater and nothing made sense –

She woke a week later in the infirmary with Mirana attending and Tarrant hovering, an absolutely terrified look in his eyes.

_The Wall – Kansas, 'Leftoverture'_

She couldn't believe her eyes – how had she missed it? She stood in front of the ruin where she had slain the Jabberwock, right where she and Tarrant had said their farewells – she touched the stonework and her hand slipped through it.

She wanted to scream at the injustice – how could this have happened again, without her noticing? Why did her dreams have to be so utterly vivid and lifelike? She almost felt dizzy, as the scene melted before her, brick by crumbling stone brick, a wall being torn down. Tears welled in her eyes, it wasn't fair, but then, nothing in life was fair, or she'd have already completed her business and been back again, or even better, not left at all, not grown this gaping hole in her chest she could not fill.

_Langue D'Amour (album version) – Laurie Anderson, 'Mister Heartbreak'_

She was story telling again, he noticed with a bright smile. Little Edine was four now, and a precocious little girl she was, and in love with her mama's strange tales. Alice herself was pregnant again, and Edine was smoothing her hands over the cloth covering her mama's swollen belly with something close to rapture. She desperately wanted a sibling, as there weren't terrible many children around to play with.

"But why did she do that?" Edine interrupted, curiously. Alice smiled.

"Because she was restless, because she was a hothead, because she was a woman in love." Alice replied, tapping the girl's little button nose. Edine looked puzzled.

"Which one, mama?" she asked impatiently. Alice smiled secretively.

"You're going to have to choose for yourself, dear one. Which would you like it to be?" She asked.

"The woman in love!" Edine exclaimed excitedly.


End file.
